


Weston

by LyingToYourInstincts



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, Gay, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-09 22:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyingToYourInstincts/pseuds/LyingToYourInstincts
Summary: Hnnnnnnnnng issa another school AU only this time with a twist. (I'm sorry I am like this.) Also teen/young adult sebaciel where it's not like creepily pedophillic





	1. Legs

"Have you seen him yet?"

The question dictated that he himself hadn't, though Ciel had no doubt in his mind he'd been hearing all kinds of rumors. Alois was wiggling his left foot as rapidly as he possibly could, reminiscent of a dog and its tail. He wasn't left handed, yet when he fidgeted it was always his left leg that trembled the most. Ciel regarded this unplesantry as well, unpleasant, and tried his hardest to ignore the way the table shivered and shook with each coming movement. Ciel had quirks of his own, the pathetic nub of eraser remains on his pencil being a testimony to that. But he did nothing so unseemly that it made noise or wobbled. He cleared his throat, leaning slightly in opposition to his friend. An attempt to reclaim the former margin of personal space.

"Two of them actually, they're twins."

This made Alois' leg twist about even more. So much so that it bumped up against Ciel's own, making his face grow hot from the indecorousness of it all. Ciel did not like being touched. Not by his best friend or by anyone else with proximity in his life. And unlike Alois, he wasn't interested in being touched by the foreign exchange students either. In total fairness, it wasn't as if they were ugly. Or at least, uglier than any of the other students. But something about the two of them put a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. In other words? They made him want to chew his eraser.

"So you did see them! Year?"

Year was dictated by the color of your uniform collar. There were four colors total, and both boys were only on their third.

Alois was watching him more intensely now, expectation quivering in his doll blue eyes. The tabletop danced about some more. Ciel glared at him, and the tabletop danced about a little less. Some days he was easier to pacify then others.

"I only saw them a moment Al, not a full body view."

Alois grew into a silent state, but it was not because of Ciel's abrupt and unsatisfactory way of answering things. Class had begun, and today was the day for Presentations. Normally such information would make Alois even more jittery than before, bouncing off walls as if he were still eligible for the First Color. But even the peppy blond knew that this particular teacher was not to be trifled with. So Ciel would be allowed some peace and quiet to recollect all of his many thoughts. At long last.

"Phantomhive?"

A small sigh escaped his lips, one he was clever enough to keep nearly inaudible.

_Or not._

His chair screeched with the very movement of his standing, his heart leapt up a bit, but his legs did not wobble. From standing position, he could more clearly see the upper half of the classroom, and the clean cut between blackboard and ceiling. Alois piped up again, for he could only remain taciturn for sporadic bursts of time, even on his best days. Their instructor chided him for this, but Ciel couldn't make out exactly what he was saying or what had already been said, for he was busy thinking again. He had to do a lot of this for steady durations, lest he utterly humiliate himself in front of his classmates. One particularly foul morning of Presentations he had Conjured up only half of a doe, and had to kneel over it and snap its neck on site to stop all that pesky screaming. It had scampered fast for a being with only its upper limbs, chest and head. So fast that Ciel had gotten blood all over his uniform. It had not been a good day. But today would be better, he knew this because he was going to make it that way, he knew this because he wasn't going to be bothered about the weird twins, or his friend's little penchant for them.


	2. Shoulder

One of the twins was in their class, just in time for the second day of Presentations. This meant he had most likely skipped the class the day preceding, and while Ciel was mostly in the habit of not caring, he loathed skippers and all the distractions that came with them. On the other hand, his scholarly presence was generally no good either. The classroom now had an uneven number of students, and they had to bring in a new desk and chair just to make room.

Now the entire student setup was just slightly asymmetrical. Did he have any idea how much of burden it was to Conjure in a space that's asymmetrical? If anything, slight physical inconveniences such as these were far more agitating than grand scheme asymmetry.

Alois didn't mind so much in this respect, but he did wish there had been a spare seat beforehand, and that that seat had been right next to him. He whispered a bit too loudly when explaining all this at the start of class. He leaned in too close so that his hot breath mingled on the canvas of Ciel's neck.

"His brother's a bit cuter, but he'll do."

Ciel didn't like how Alois spoke of people like they were merchandise for buying and selling. Like all that mattered was the presentation, as opposed to the contents of character. It was as if he were ordering at a drive through, the way he spoke. Abruptly and thoughtlessly and showing lack of concern for the stomach ache these greasy fries were sure to give him. Not that Ciel's own nihilistic, nitpicky, and breathtakingly unsensual way of viewing the world around him was much better.

Anyway, it was time for this new acquaintance to present. He stood and Ciel found that he was tall, while Alois found that he wasn't tall enough. He had a tattoo on his left hand, covered a bit some sort of something, but not enough that you couldn't easily identify its presence. Was that even permitted? A rhetorical question. Alois also had a tattoo, but it wasn't in the kind of place that a schoolteacher could see.

The man's name was Sebastian, the same as Ciel's old dog. Ciel didn't believe in coincidences, but he also didn't believe in his dog turning into a boy and joining the academy. He would have to think of a more realistic meaning behind this later. Or, just forget about it completely. Forgetting sounded like the better option, but not the easier one.

Before Sebastian's presentation, he had been lurking about, chatting it up with the surrounding students as if this entire congregation was nothing more than an ice cream social. Had he even read the Student Handbook yet? How many of the pages had he memorized? Clearly not 32 or 81. When Sebastian identified himself as Conjurer Ciel almost pitied him, he knew firsthand Conjuring required a clear mind, and his was bound to be full of junk food recipes and fun facts about "The Game".

But Sebastian brought forth fire. It curled around him like a liquid, twirling betwixt his fingertips (he had painted nails?) and lapping at his shoulder. A serpent of the flames, though whether or not he was controlling it himself or had actually assigned it a personality was yet to be seen. Either way, Ciel was viewing this with obnoxiously widened eyes and he was finding himself to be angry. Really angry. He slipped the end of his pencil it his mouth when it appeared no one was watching.

He dodged Alois without explanation at class' end, ducking his barrage of questions and simtaneously ducking out the doorway. He found Sebastian meandering his way about the hall, like he didn't know where to go and he didn't care that he didn't know. Ciel thought that he should ask for directions. Ciel thought that he should walk in better formation. Ciel thought that he shouldn't violate dress code by wearing black shoes instead of brown.

But his pencil was busy drowning in notebook paper.

"Liar," is what he said when he at last caught up, "you're a liar and a fraud."

But this "Sebastian" did not seem to be at all bothered by the soiling of his name. He smiled as if it were a compliment to be referred to in any way at all. Still, to humor him, he asked. He cloaked his voice with a mocking sort of disbelief. He tilted his head and he tilted his tone. One of those long dark hairs fell into his face and sliced it right down the middle. "What have I ever done to you, Ciel Phantomhive, to make you think of me in such a light?"

Sebastian said it as if they were old friends, and when he said it that way it was hard not to believe. Ciel had to give him props for the memorization of his name, but what about memorizing a school map? Did he expect to wander about all five floors and twenty plus hallways until someone took pity on him and showed him where he ought to be? Ciel cleared his throat. He spoke as if he were reciting text book information, authority injected into his vocal chords. His small frame made these types of accusations unexpected, but he looked boldly in the anyone who broke rules. Or just slightly annoyed him with their existence.

"A Conjurer requires great depths of concentration in order to accomplish anything at all, and you were chatting it up all morning. Even amidst the presentation itself I saw your eyes wander about the room, something halfhearted inside of them," here he paused and checked Sebastian's front, "A Year Four has nowhere near the skill necessary to perform with such disinterest. So the question remains-" Ciel had to pause again here, given Sebastian had sped up considerably and he was having a mini asthma attack trying to rant while keeping up with him- "what are you?"

His legs seemed to lengthen with questioning, and Ciel's face was forming crimson sorts of blemishes as he struggled to keep up. Ciel had a knack for many things, but athleticism wasn't one of them. His own hair slipped into his face now, but unlike Sebastian he quickly corrected it.

"Big britches for a Third Color, are they not? You have to crane your neck just to speak to me."

The insult didn't go over his small and roundish head, but it was accompanied by such a cheerful and teasing demeanor, meaning that in order to justify its response Ciel would have to be willing to overreact to the situation even more than he already had.

"You never answered my question." By now Alois has spotted him, and was running their way in a very comical fashion. Much longer spent on this discussion, and this walk to an unknown classroom, would brandish the three of them tardy.

"Your frame is small and your eyes smaller, Mr. Phantomhive. Best watch your step before you lose your place."

Another threat. This one slightly less vague than the other. But only slightly. And he said it as more of a…warning? Like Sebastian was trying to prepare him as opposed to intimidate him. Either way, it fell as rubbish to his ears. The nonsensical ramblings of a school-skipping skill-lying madman.

Ciel let him walk on, the eraser chew feeling eating away at the pit of his stomach. Alois was next to him again, full of words that he was willing himself to say. Most of them ending in question marks and the other few explanation points. A total of zero "dot dot dots". Ciel hadn't been late to one class for the entirety of first semester. Today he was going to be late.


	3. Hair

Alois was slipping through his curls one by one, watching his reflection as they bounced back up at him. But some of the follicles did not bounce back so smoothly. Many latched onto his hairbrush with sensual golden tendrils, luring out violent yanks and a reddened face. Still, Alois was silent throughout, face and body unmoving, just watching himself. This was the calmest he would ever be. Ciel was silent as well. Was it peculiar that he liked to watch? Something about this particular routine of his roommate seemed a lullaby for his eyes, and he was perfectly content to do nothing but stare for the entire duration. Sometimes he would count and rank the movements in his mind, though they often totaled about the same each time. This was a thing he liked to think about when he wasn't busy thinking about other things, and Alois never chided him for it. Perhaps he was just grateful to not be receiving reprimands for once.

But on this day specifically, Ciel was also thinking about other things. Multitasking, as they call it. And Ciel hated to multitask. Everything ought to have its own allotted time and place and those times and places ought to be memorized and or written down and then left to stagnate. Despite his passionate bias in regards to the subject, today Ciel simply couldn't subdue his multitasking state. And apparently Alois couldn't either, because he quickly snapped out of his trance like persona.

"What are you doing?" It wasn't a mean question. Ciel took offense in spite of the fact.

"Nothing," Ciel replied. Only it wasn't nothing. Ciel had been making a list. It was titled "Everything I Hate About Sebastian". It was numbered from one through infinity, and written all in ball point pen cursive. He was of the opinion that lists look their best in ball point pen cursive. But he had moved his hand to cover the text instinctually once questioned, and this left several dark smears in the process. Ciel squinted at the smears accordingly, and found them as unappealing as a row of mushed insects, ranked by some cryptic distinctive characteristics. The following are some of the things about Sebastian that had been written legibly on his list, before the smears.

He was misusing the title of Conjurer. His hair was too shaggy, his eyes too empty. His legs were too long. When he walked, it was always too fast or too slow. His talk was overly frilly, like he was twisting up Shakespeare with his tongue. He flirted too much. He was unnecessarily pretentious about his status as the Fourth Color. His voice was too deep. His hands too big. When he ate in public, he looked like he was just pretending to eat instead of actually eating. Why put in any effort to at all? What was he hiding with his eating-not-eating strategy?

Underneath this list Ciel put the one thing he did like, so as not to be completely without nuance in his aggressions. Sebastian already knew his name. And presumably, the names of his other classmates. That much at least, was commendable.

But this single addition reminded Phantomhive of a plethora more things for the dislike column: all the things he didn't know; what shoes to wear, what classes not to skip (all of them), and how to not show up halfway through the school year. There was more following all of these, and he had grown so busy counting all of them that he had forgotten to count the hair and the brushes and now Alois was done brushing. He lay the mess of tangles onto the bathroom sink, and scuttled over in attempt to peer past his friend's shoulder. "I thought we didn't have homework for the day." Alois and Ciel had shared the exact same schedule for every single year they had been enrolled, and their dorms had never been switched around. Ciel had this theory that god just hated him.

He snatched up the paper before it could be exposed, and crinkled it into the pocket of his sweatshirt. He was quick, but Alois was quicker. Must be all those sugary drinks with which he poisoned his body. He chased and tackled Ciel, pinning one arm behind his back and reaching boisterously for the other. There were many things that Ciel did not like, and being pinned down and stolen from definitely made the list. He wiggled underneath the weight of Alois' knee, but knew that by struggling he was just asking for a bruise. When he spoke, he spit his words at the floor.

"When I get up, I'm going to slit your throat and hold you over a trash can to watch it drip."

Alois scrunched up his face at that, but he didn't seem all that intimidated by the child whose spine he was crushing.

"You don't have to be gross about it, I just want to see what you're getting all hide-y over."

Their two free arms were twisted against another. Ciel couldn't really see all that much, what with his face scrunched so prettily against the grey blue carpet, but he had the feeling that his arm was winning. Right up until Alois just asked for him for it, and his hand proceeded to act of its own accord.

"Wait a minute, did you just- "

Alois was already looking over the paper, adding little hearts to each and every con until they were all pro's. Some of the other things he scrawled across the paper include: a ladybug, a butterfly, and several members of the nudist's society. Ciel tore the paper away from him, crinkled it up, and tossed it into their wastebasket. Slam dunk was the term he thought of, but he didn't know sports well enough to be sure. "You know the rule." The rule was something Ciel made up. Its less vague name could be summarized as "No Hypnotizing me for anything ever", and for the most part, Alois obliged. Not because he was a good boy, but because he was a good friend. Kind of. He repeated the rule now, only this time the words were different and the voice meant to sound like Ciel's own.

"The rule is kiss my ass," he taunted, in his best imitation of a posh and pompous accent. But he stopped him yammering and paled when Ciel started towards him, "No! I-I take it back."

* * *

...

"Even you know it was an accident, Ciel." Alois only called the Phantomhive boy by his first name when he regarded their situation as monumentous. Otherwise it was Blue (in reference to the unique hue of his hair), C, or any other equally cringe worthy and detestable nickname. Ciel knew it was an accident. But simply knowing such a thing would not dissolve the crimson from his cheeks. And it was for that very shade of crimson that the two of them weren't talking. More accurately speaking, Alois was doing all the talking for the both of them.

The blond was swinging his legs off the end of his bed. His socked feet bounced accordingly. His knees buckled against each other in almost hesitant rotations. He spoke with poignant puppy dog flair, as if Ciel didn't hate dogs and everything they stood for.

"I said I'm sorry. You can't ignore me forever."

To which Ciel thought that he very well could, or at least in regards to verbal communication. But he wasn't going to. Like all of their disputes derived from awkward near sexual encounters, this would blow over by Monday, and Ciel would be back to his slightly less unpleasant self as if nothing had ever happened. They wouldn't speak of it again. In Ciel's mind, he thought of a list for Alois to accompany Sebastian's. But he threw this one away before pen ever met paper. When Alois tired of his own antics and at last fell to be unconscious, he still had that pitiful pout strewn about his face. Ciel fished his only physical list of the day out of the waste basket at a noise level which he was certain would wake no one, and proceeded to fall asleep staring at the wooden slots belonging to the boy above.

Bottom bunk luck.


	4. Eyes

After the annual Presentations have come to a conclusion, the class holding them branches off into individual groups, based upon Gift and or Skill. For Ciel, being the only Conjurer of his class, this was one of the very few times of day in which he could escape Alois’ sticky fingered grasp, as well as everyone else’s. The only time he was ever really allowed to think in a state of peace. He lavished and thrived in the concept, as it was the closest Ciel would ever get to “Me time” or “treating himself”. And so of course, Sebastian had to take it away from him.

To add insult to injury, the eldest, by either year or month, essentially led the studies of their given Gift. For Alois this was no problem, he got along with everyone in his faction, and reminded surprisingly obedient. (Or maybe unsurprisingly, given the talent in question.) Ciel was not so lucky. To be completely unbiased in thinking, Ciel would have hated to be paired with anyone else as well, he had two friends total and neither of them shared this technique with him, meaning the rest of the school (all hated by himself) would have to suffice. So it wasn’t that Sebastian was the only one that was hated, it was just that he was hated the most. (Granted, titles mean nothing when you ignore them.)

Ciel was now rolling his pencil along his desk, wood on wood, round on rectangular. He paused only to glare and to speak petulantly. “Have you quite finished?” 

Sebastian had been smirking silently for several minutes, as he was so keenly aware of the irony of their situation.

“No.”

“Well, you can finish now.”

 “Maybe so, though it’s not your place to tell me such.”

 He was still smiling. He still had that damned trifle of hair which would not fall cleanly to either side, and instead sat a little off center in its own charming turn of events. Ciel did not find the follicle charming. Nor the smile, nor the burnt eyes which accompanied it. Ciel folded his arms firmly in front of his petite frame, abandoning the pencil momentarily.

 “I don’t care if you were multitudes my senior, I’m not going to listen to you and I’m not going to do what you say.”

 “You’d much prefer it, to sitting all prim and proper every hour for every day of the week.”

 Those blue eyes of his flashed back dangerously in retort. The Phantomhive boy corrected his posture. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

 “Nothing,” replied the other, in the kind of voice that one uses when the answer isn’t nothing, “Just that I have you figured out, is all.”

 Ciel was still irritated, but something in the statement evoked curiosity, against his better judgement. The two of them were sitting a considerable set of paces away from their instructor and several of the other groups, not that it would have made much of a difference, with the conjoined chatter easily engulfing their private conversation, a protectant against wandering ears.

 “Oh, do tell. I actually love hearing un-researched assumptions about my person.”

 Ciel did not like the way in which he was being referred to, both vocally and physically. Like a child. A single year divided the two, not a decade. Ciel had never and would never require the coddling of another, much less another peer.

 “It’s simple, really. Control. You cannot stand to let a single strand of discord into your life, but it’s a feint,” his adversary leaned forward, an evil glint in his cold eyes,” Do you know what feint means?”

Now Ciel was really getting pissed. He tried to disguise the trembling, but knew nothing to resolve the redness of either ear and cheek. The audacity of a stranger to dissect him in such a way, as if he were specimen as opposed to scientist. And not any stranger, but a rule breaker. Good only for disruption and deception. He was not unaware of course, at the implications being placed upon him. Not only was Ciel Phantomhive being cast as something less than animal, there was the gnawing sensation of disgust at the fact that someone of Sebastian’s caliber would dare title themselves as his keeper.

“I rank highest in this class, in all classes I have undergone. I am second only to Headmaster himself. And you dare spew this belittling nonsense in my untarnished face?” As if such commentary had not been at least verbally provoked.

But Sebastian was not finished.

“It’s only natural that you act in such a way,” he said, “because you were never taught how to ask for what you want. Only what you are supposed to want. Prime ownership. Peak perfection. But it is not for you. You’d much rather something wreck your very existence and expose you wholly for the dirty little thing which you truly are. A total power exchange, both sexually and emotionally. Someone to tell you what to do and how to feel. But you will never receive such attention if you keep shoving away so imprudently at all attempts of access.” 

“Blasphemous innuendos aside, who are you to play psychiatrist to the likes of myself? Your hair is disheveled. You only dress in black. You talk all pretentiously and yet you don’t even know what you are. Speak to me of control, but you’d do well to self-apply.”

Sebastian remained stagnant in his unbothered expression. “Alright then,” he shrugged, “lie to yourself. Pretend you’re normal.” He reached forward, sending Ciel leaping out of his seat instinctively. Only when he leaped it was more up than out, causing an immediate spike of pain in the upper region of his leg as it collided so rapidly against the nether regions of his desk. Not only was the sensation significantly unpleasant, it was also significantly loud. At last, all eyes were on the two of them. The disrupters. The bad kids. Their instructor even looked to Ciel for explanation, but he was so bewildered by his own silly mistake that he was struck speechless.

Looking down he saw what Sebastian had been reaching for, which he now slipped into his pocket. Large fingers wrapped around something sacred and not his own. If given the time to further ponder the particular imagery given, Ciel would have been a lot redder in the face than he was in this moment.

“That’s my pencil,” Ciel hissed under his breath, it wasn’t the right element of this situation to be initially addressing if he valued his reputation, but the poor thing was all out of sorts from his pitifully humiliating experience. It did not help that Ciel was of very sensitive build, meaning the bruising would be raw and extreme, despite the injury bordering on minor.

Sebastian towered over him when addressing him, even when bending himself to lower his line of sight in a once more mocking manner. He smiled somehow while speaking. All that damn smiling, like nothing ever displeased or inconvenienced his existence.

“Then if you want it, you’ll surely know where to look.” And with that Sebastian exited the room, leaving Ciel alone and frustrated, pencil-less and rapidly bruising. Their instructor was still locking his way for justification, as well as saying some kinds of words to Ciel’s awkwardly stiff body. But Ciel was not thinking of his words, but the words of another.

_“You’ll surely know where to look.”_

 

 


	5. Stomach

When his jaw clamped down onto the meal betwixt his teeth, it splattered thick and slimy globs of jelly everywhere, all of which were just narrowly dodged by his tablemate. The reddish-purple bits then landed accordingly, scattering and sticking to any surfaces that their gelatinous tendrils could get their hands on. This included the lunch table, the adjoining seats, and several portions of the tile floor. "I'm sure nobody even remembers what happened yesterday," Alois suggested helpfully, his mouth still so full that he launched sandwich innards like bullets with each additional word.

Ciel tried to maintain an appetite despite being forcefully subjected to such a distasteful scene, in public no less. After all this was their norm, Alois making a mess of things and Ciel having to grin and bear it. Or in his case, frown smugly. He was also significantly put off by the sandwich monster's subject matter. As if being told to forget about something made it anywhere near forgettable. Ciel only needed the time and space to recollect himself in solitude, but the three of these things were all inaccessible to him. Accepting that total denial of his situation would never be achievable, Ciel settled for the next best thing: Changing the subject.

He gestured to where Sieglinde was now approaching them, tray in hand. "I thought you said the cafeteria food here was repulsive, and not to be eaten even if it were the last edible thing on earth."

"I did, and it is," she retorted, "But I've just got to see what this jello stuff is about," she prodded at the translucent lump, fork in hand, while the other hand steered her chair closer to the two boys, "Did you know that jello is composed of animal bones? Nothing that I could extract for potions, but it's still a fun thing to think about." Ciel pretended to care about animal bones. If he could get Sieglinde to go on a little tangent, then she and Alois could out-talk each other for the entirety of the lunch period. Leaving Ciel alone. He then tried to revel in his newfound isolation, but this more productive train of thought was followed by all those other less than useful things on his mind. Pesky flies of thoughts is all that they were, munching and bathing happily among the shit that was…

Ciel's line of vision latched onto a collection of dark hair off in the distance, so far left of their table that he was very near cornered.  _That._ Of course, he wasn't going to be eating. Why even show up in the cafeteria when he wasn't going to eat? Still, his figure was hardly caving in enough, or even gradually decreasing to any extent that would suggest prolonged starvation. Perhaps he was scared to eat in public. Perhaps, like some kind of hermit, he snuck scraps and half-eaten bags of chips up to his dorm after everyone else cleared out. Ciel took a bite out of his own food now, just to prove to himself his own superiority. A thin sliver of chocolate cake broke clean off and then slid properly down his gullet. Ciel then washed down the chocolate-y chunk with a milk carton, the only part of a school lunch which he would ever rely on the school to provide.

Sebastian was interested in something now, something just beyond Ciel. His stare was so ardent, that had Ciel been the subject matter in question, he would be scared shitless. The gaze being delivered had such a fiery intensity to it, his eyes opened outward instead of in, spilling the contents of sensuality all over his visual target. Ciel felt sick just pondering it, much less looking in the direction of the gazer amidst the incident. Furthermore, when it finally dawned upon him that he was in fact the one being looked at, he could feel the cake sliding back upwards from the recesses of his stomach to the dehydrated trail of his pharynx.

Ciel's neck snapped downward, hiding not so discreetly behind the quaintness of his lunchbox. He pretended to be very interested in the carton lettering, in the awkwardly doodled cow which paraded its message of healthy bodies or whatever. He knew now that his cheeks were as rosy as his stomach was weak, and was quite proud indeed at his successful rejection of the upchuck.

"-pretty distracted lately. Are you okay?"

Ciel's next snapped back upwards when he realized that the question was being applied to himself. His line of sight met that of the green eyed, bob-headed girl, though he wished that it hadn't because he almost felt guilty for the mild concern plastered on her pale face.

"Oh, he's just thinking about that time after Presentations, when he totally- "

Ciel jabbed Alois in the gut before he could finish, a bit harsher than intended, but as the harshness only increased effectiveness of the action, he felt no remorse for either pain or shock that had been caused. "If you value your life than I suggest that you shut it."

Alois' legs were bouncing again. "So mean today. And I was only trying to help. Unlike your pencil boy."

Now Sieglinde was more confused than ever. "Pencil boy?"

"Never mind it."

Ciel had only just now picked up on this concept, which was unlike him, given his affinity for knowing things. Alois was jealous. Of Sebastian. Of all people. The one bastard even more pesky than he. Perhaps it was a feeling of replacement, given that one trouble had switched itself out for another in such a brief amount of time. Still, it was stupid. He and Alois did everything together at all times. They had known each other for years. Not to put his presence on a platform by demoting another but, Sebastian was just a thing muddling all other things up.

Speaking of which, Ciel peered cautiously over his lunch container. His recently obtained parasite was still watching him. Waiting. For what, Ciel wasn't sure. He only knew that there was a waiting and that it correlated to his existence.

"Never mind it he says. Like he'd never mind that-."

"Finish that sentence and I'll finish you. I swear to it."

"-In his- "

"-Look, why don't you go pester and embarrass someone else for a change? Today I'm just really not up for it." Upon saying this Ciel's eyes wandered, only this time they were in a way meant to direct Alois' own. His overly attentive chum was able to catch on to the hints he was being given almost immediately.

Opposite his brother sat the other one. Completely on the other far side of the cafeteria, completely as scary looking, but not quite as alone. At least this one had the sensibility to surround himself with others and spare his own spectacled reputation, despite sticking out like a sore thumb among the baby-faced companions he had surrounded himself with. Beside him however, there lie a vacant seat.

Alois was back to his usual perky and upbeat self, sparkling about at the very suggestion of whoring himself out.

"You really think so? You think that he likes me?"

Sieglinde flashed Ciel a warning look, but he ignored it. He did not care if his friend got rejected, or even humiliated. So long as he was out of his hair for the rest of the hour. Sieglinde nudged him gently, trying to guilt him into looking at her "I disapprove" face, but he couldn't be bothered. It wasn't Ciel's problem that Alois liked to put out.

"Whatever happened that self-confidence?" Ciel asked, as if he wasn't almost entirely to blame for the emotional stunting and neutering of his friend. Sieglinde just rolled her eyes. She was back to poking at her Jell-O, which she probably wouldn't end up eating for all her unappetizing ramblings of their skeletal ingredients.

Alois kicked his feet back and forth under the table. He had already finished his sandwich several paragraphs ago, leaving only a couple of bread-based crumbs in their wake. The crumbled-up bread bits sat surprisingly cleanly on top of their Ziploc baggie, spread out evenly into 5 specks for each row. "I'm off then, wish me luck!" The blonde cheerleader of a man scampered off then, and Ciel could not bring himself to look up for long enough to witness the car crash that was sure to follow.

"And you?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"You ran him off to his man so that you could go to yours, didn't you?" Sieglinde may not have agreed with his coping mechanism, but at least her eyes didn't look so angry anymore. Having abandoned the mysterious green blob, she now sipped primly at her juice box. What kind of 1st color was still so keen on juice boxes? Still it almost suited her, the way that she wasn't trying so hard to not be juvenile like most other teens.

"Just what are you prattling on about? Did you roll into a wall this morning?"

She ignored the insult, as she was prone to do. Belittling her was nowhere near as enjoyable as with Alois, because her initial reaction was to just let things slide off and keep saying whatever it was that she wanted to say. Therefore, Ciel's typical approach of inciting rage and or shame was completely lost on Sieglinde Sullivan and her jello and her juice-box.

"I don't so much mind it, if you want to go see him. Lunch is almost over anyways."


	6. Brain

Now Sebastian was claiming that he was a Firebreeder. On one hand, Ciel welcomed the opportunity to return to a state of exile with open arms, however bitter and solemn such an outlook may generally be. On the other, who was to say that this time was any more genuine than the last? At the top of the list of people Ciel hated were rule breakers. Second highest in rating were liars. Sebastian sat with the others now, talking about god knows what. Alois sat with the Hypnotists, and though he was of equal distance from Ciel as Sebastian was, with all the eyebrow raising and finger pointing that commenced, he had a pretty good idea just what the blond was babbling in regards too. He just chose not to dwell on it.

It's a powerful thing, choosing not to dwell. Of course, there's a cruel irony of it all, because as you begin to praise yourself on choosing not to dwell, you are in a way dwelling on the very act (or lack thereof) of dwelling. And this was that paradoxical state in which Ciel Phantomhive now found himself, thinking of nothing but his pride in thinking of nothing. Sebastian still had his pencil. Beyond that, he had had the audacity to bring it to class with him, to roll it around as if it were his own. Ciel's pencil. And sitting in Ciel's seat, none the less. Credit where credit is due, he certainly knew how to rub a person the wrong way. (And given the manner in which he carried himself, Ciel had no doubts that he knew how to a rub a person the right way as well.)

Ciel persisted in his silent and nearly perfect stillness, right up until the classroom door had burst itself open and there was some girl standing there, a first color with a freckle painted face and nervous bashful eyes. It was clear she was one of those they sent to gather up others, and it was with an intense curiosity that Ciel wondered who could possibly be being gathered. Likely Sebastian, the kind of person who had without a doubt already stirred up trouble among this place. But Sebastian's murky old eyes revealed not a word of culpability. "Is there a…a Ciel Phantomhive in this class?" The instructor appeared as bewildered as he. It was, as one may have guessed, an extremely rare occurrence in which Ciel was ever beckoned by the headmaster. It was an extremely rare occurrence in which anyone was ever beckoned by the headmaster, much less prized student and respectful pupils such as Ciel Phantomhive.

And for this reason, one can hardly blame Ciel for the slight shudder in his legs as he wobbled his way out of the classroom doing his very best to ignore all stone weighing stares thrown in his direction, especially one or two stares in particular. A younger version of himself may have involuntarily conjured up something in his height of distress, something like a monster or a couple of old eyeballs. But he was far too old for that kind of behavior now.


	7. Fingernails

The grey-haired man had a full-on manicure. A manicure. Long black coffin style nails. And this was their infamous headmaster. Primped and pressed like a drag queen just to sit an office for eight hours. Ciel stared at him like he was staring at the sun, which was ironic, given the sort of clothes the man was wearing were not beaming in the slightest. But the man was. He seemed so eager to even be in the same room as another, as if he had never had visitors before.

"You're the Phantomhive boy, yes?" He was a bit too giddy in asking, and twiddled his fingers about as he waited for the answer, "You know something? I think I knew your father. Good man, that he was. Awfully dead now though." Ciel was unsure of how to approach this, of how to approach this man or his line of questioning. He had always anticipated Weston's headmaster to be a man of great importance, a man whose words were carefully chosen and whose office did not smell like kitty litter. He was trailing off mentally now, as a result of his discomfort, longing for the familiarity of a particular sensation at his fingertips. But the sensation had been brandished by another.

"Is that all you wanted?" he now asked the detestable figure, trying to contain his annoyance, a kindness usually not granted by the likes of himself, "to confirm about my father?" It was not so easily that he masked the second bit of annoyance; the annoyance he retained upon at last recognizing the face held when that stranger spoke of the deceased. It was almost...gleeful? Ciel could attribute this to lack of sleep, sure. But that did not make the tone of voice or use of diction any less disrespectful.

Phantomhive realized now that he had gone this entire drawn out conversation without seeing the other man's eyes. He was almost certain that they were there, hidden underneath all the masses of matted fluff that he mandated a mane. Still the concept horrified him, the idea that there was even the slightest of chances of an eyeless man in his presence, smiling a toothpick-y smile despite the dreadful aroma and unnerving ambiance his person exuded.

"No. There was, there was something…" The man now fumbled cautiously over his words, as if flipping through the notebook pages of his cranium. His lengthy nails tap, tap, tapped, the square of cherry brown before him. He did not seem embarrassed to be caught in a place of unknowing, as any ordinary headmaster might have been. Instead he appeared almost amused by his own confusion, as if it were as enticing and delectable as the knowledge of Ciel's dead father. Ciel once more grew aggravated at this notion, the notion of feeling pleasured at all the wrong times and by all the wrong things. To allude that he was in a way envious of this inappropriate behavior would not be as far off as he wished it to be, though Ciel himself would never fess up to such a long. He would only stay in his madness, and further it whenever he saw a person amidst his vicinity not doing the same.

"Perhaps I can jog your memory. You're the headmaster. I'm Ciel Phantomhive. You called me to this place some time ago by means of a little freckled girl who interrupted my assignment, and then you badgered me about my dead father."

The long-locked man had a good and hearty laugh at that one. He slapped his arms wildly on the desk, which meant it took all of Ciel's willpower not to leap five feet at the abruptness of such a sound. "Assignment," he said, "there are no such assignments after Presentations! Everyone knows everything else they say in that class is just fancy talk for sit around and do nothing."

Ciel scrunched his face into his color a bit, hoping any and all underlying redness would rub itself off. He had not known that. He had taken that class to be a very serious one with major participation grades. He had even completed (and color-coded) all seventeen of the advanced level extra credit assignments. And to top all of this off, Ciel was being made to feel stupid in front of the stupidest looking man he had ever seen in his entire life.

Despite the assumed dimwittedness, the other man caught on quite quickly. He smiled a subtler one this time, something of a Sebastian smile (not that Ciel could explicitly remember and describe such a thing). "Everyone except you, I meant." Ciel would have been more offended if he had truly thought that this sort of man could ever come from a place of meanness in the first place. And it was then that his indignation began slowly to melt away into pity, pity for the headmaster's obliviousness to the true asscrack that was life. Pity for his inability to be cruel, or to say no. Pity for his incapability to handle the elaborate fixtures in a bathroom shower.

"I remembered!" the headmaster said at last, and before Ciel could question him as to what he remembered, the subject of his remembrance came bursting through the door. Again with the suddenness and the door bursting. Ciel was beginning to believe that he was the last person on the planet who knew anything of appropriate conduct.

"Is he here yet? I know you said you'd call me, but like, is he here yet?"

Ciel nearly rocketed out of each individual skin cell upon realization, his arm hairs all stood up and began crawling about like spiders across his thin frame. He considered running, despite the asthma attack that was sure to follow. He considered Conjuring a massive blade with which he could slit his throat with. He considered anything and everything that would exclude this very moment from continuing in the way that he thought it would continue. But it was too late. She saw him and came barging forward, barging like he was about to be her second door.

But homo sapiens do not make for reliable doors. So Ciel swerved opposite at the last minute, allowing her to collapse ever so keenly on the floor, smacking her body against the unswept atrocity that was any given inch of this room. His headmaster tsked at the action, though he was still smiling.

"It's not nice to treat your girlfriend like that Ciel, especially after she travelled all this way to see you."

Ciel helped her up now, grimacing at the very thought of his hand having to linger on hers for the movement to be successful. Of course, she was not so much as mad at him for avoiding her, and that only increased his loathing of her presence.

"It's okay, I know he missed me," she bubbled, and her eyes sparkled diligently upon hearing her own words. Was it possible to still be shiny after a makeout session with some weirdo's unkempt floor? Her persona reflected the fact. Ciel once more considered the Conjuring option. It's not as if she could stop him. But he knew better. He was a man, despite his size. He had responsibilities and reputation and every other frilly thing that the planet allowed. And he intended to keep it that way. So Ciel did not release her hand, and he walked Elizabeth out of that room in the gentlest strides his body would allow.

Fingers crossed that this particular visit would not last long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is my least favorite I've done so far but to be fair to me, I'm a stubborn asshole who has no current access to the original copy of it (it's on a broken flash drive.) so this will have to do. I promise the next one will be amazing because I've already put a considerable bit of effort into it and it's going to be very lengthy! I'll probably get it finished tomorrow so it can be up for Christmas day. Also, thanks to my first ever reviewer for this story! You've made me very happy! I'm the proudest of my writing style for this piece by far, it reminds me more of the writing of authors I look up to. So I'm glad that someone has noticed! I was kind of worried that this story would just go unnoticed after all the shit I'm pouring into it, so thank you. I'm glad to be entertaining someone. Not that I should necessarily judge anything's worth on view count, it's just nice to have a reminder that someone's interested in what I'm putting out.


	8. Lungs

Since the temporary addition of his girlfriend on campus, Ciel had been spending a lot more of his free time in the few places which her red ribbon-ed self could not follow him about without causing alarm. His own dorm room made for the most preferable escapades, but it was more often than not already occupied by an equally obsessive someone. This left Ciel only one viable option, and despite the dreadfulness of the aforementioned option, it was the one place that Elizabeth could most definitely not follow him into without accusatory eyes wandering in her direction.

Generally speaking, Ciel did not enjoy the usage of public restrooms for a multitude of reasons. All of which came leaping back at him as he entered this. Empty brown rolls sat diagonal across all the greenish tiles, and it all smelled sort of puke-ish. Toilet paper was the confetti that littered every square inch of flooring and then some, because god forbid the sinks and urinals not be pelted with an additional layer of white. The five other bathroom trips he had made today were all superior in setting to the one in which he now frequented. It was an escape, sure. But no vacation.

Ciel sat cross legged in a stall of his own, desperately trying to avert his mind from the knowledge of every e coli bacterium which would be creeping its way up the seat of his perfectly pressed pants. His cold and knobby legs shuddered as a cool draft overtook them, and his nostrils remained in a constant state of clenching, while his eyes maintained a constant state of squinting. It wasn't ideal, but at least he was alone.

It was upon this very "At least I am alone," thought in which Ciel first heard the noise. Soft at first, so subtle in its utterance, that he'd have convinced himself he imagined it, if it weren't for the gradual increase of decibel laced into each reppition of the sound. It was something breathy and desperate, heaving air by the gallon. Just the very sound was giving Ciel that wretched redness in his cheeks. He was sixteen years old, therefore he recognized that sort of a sound with ease, the sort of a sound that teenagers know and know how to make. Despite the knowing, he struggled with rationalizing its existence. Because what were the odds? And who among Weston's halls would dare be so despicable and shameless? Despite Ciel's own general condemnation of the human race, he truly did not believe that there was a soul among souls so desperate and lost as to commence with self-gratification in a public lavatory.

So Ciel accordingly labelled himself as hallucinatory, arguing adamantly that it just simply could not be what he thought it was, if it was in fact anything at all. But the longer he sat there, the more sensual and ragged those breaths became. Ciel's own body felt more and more horrid with each auditory emission, the lengthier ones causing his stomach to jump upward past his throat. Eventually, he could take it no longer, and slammed his own stall door open, letting it hit hard on the other. Apparently the other could not either, because he let out his final gasp just before a small item clattered itself on to that terribly torn tile. Ciel could contain his conjoined curiosity and annoyance no longer. He peered at the thing which had so suddenly clattered, the thing which had rolled out from under the stall and now lay at his foot, as if it were begging to be discovered by weary eyes.

Ciel was always boasting his keen sense of vision, but there was no way he would have ever seen this coming. The wood had engraving on it, Ciel knew this because it was his wood and his engraving. The pencil read, Ciel Phantomhive. He peered downward again, this time at the stall's occupant. Not with perverse intent, but to mentally match the shoes to suspect before he got the hell out. Black boots. Black. Boots.

He barreled out of that place without so much as a second glance. Of course, Elizabeth was still waiting. Always waiting. She had been nervously toeing at the dusted ground with her cheap pink high tops before recognizing the return of his presence. Her eyes kind of lit up at the prospect of no longer being alone.

"Took you long enough," she teased, though she genuinely seemed more worried than angry. Anyone weaker than himself would have taken the opportunity to feel guilty, but Ciel couldn't afford that sort of time and effort.

"We have to keep moving," he verbally intruded, grabbing her hand voraciously, a gesture that in any other context would have been considered romantic. But Elizabeth wasn't stupid. Ciel was always forgetting that. She looked at her hand in his, and now she seemed a little angry. Nowhere near meanness of course, but bordering quite evidently on curious and impatient.

"What's the hurry for," she asked, blinking inquisitively up at him, "You were in there so long, and suddenly you can't afford me a second of walking?" If it were anyone asking Ciel would have simply assumed they were being self-centered in their line of questioning, but Elizabeth, despite her lack of blatant stupidity, was not quite clever enough for narcissism. There was something almost kitten-like about her approach to the situation, her hesitating state which she could not abandon without further access to knowledge. Unfortunately for Ciel, this was the one time in which he did not feel like teaching her. He tried not to huff at her little act of rebellion. He tugged gently at her arm, trying to ignore how uncomfortable he was with the excess physical contact.

"Must you question everything I tell you?"

Wrong answer. Elizabeth's smile dropped clean off of her face. "You're angry at me now?" It was the type of question she would ask someone right before she brought out the waterworks. Ciel could already recognize the signature quiver in her lip. Honestly, must every peer he surrounded himself with act like a godamned child? Ciel did not have time for this, and he didn't want to have that sort of time either. Still he tried desperately to console her, to whisper soothingly and frame her face with those stray golden hairs. (Her hair was nice, but not as nice as Alois', a much dustier and doll-like hue than her own.) He begged with her to come along, but he had to balance out his eagerness with words of praise and comfort, because god forbid he get caught making a girl cry.

"Upsetting women now, are we?" Ciel did not have to look up to recognize the owner of the voice, so he wouldn't. Not that he was brave enough for eye contact in the first place, considering the earlier happenings he had wandered in on. He felt that same heavy and predatory breathing on the back of his neck. He felt something soft in contrast-a handkerchief being placed assuredly into his right palm.

"Go ahead and tend to her."

Ciel still could not look in the direction of the voice both above and behind him, though he tried his hardest to disguise the tremble in his voice. He handed the fabric to Elizabeth, who seemed even before confused than ever.

"You better hope for your sake that you washed your godamned hands."

The voice chirped closer to his ear now. Without a face to place with it, the entity might as well be infinite, for all he knew the man was all around him, all encompassing. If he were to muster up the courage to look behind himself, Ciel would find nothing but that man wrapped around him for miles and miles, all powerful and omnipresent. Sexually suffocating his present company, inside and out. Furthermore, he hated this increased closeness, though he hated it in a way which made him hate the concept of protesting it even more.

"Cursing like a sailor all of the sudden? Whatever happened to the holier than thou manner of speech?"

_Whatever happened to not self-stimulating to writing utensils?_

Luckily for all three of them, Elizabeth did not recognize that Ciel was quickly growing tenser than before. She wiped eagerly at her face and rearranged her shirt, trying to revert back to her presentable and happy-go-lucky self. "Ciel? Do you know this guy? You didn't bring him up to me."

Sebastian had a good laugh at that one. How could he not? Ciel took Elizabeth's hand again, unraveling the tissue from its place betwixt her fingers. He held it in his own for a moment, drawn to the softness of it in his hand once more. For a brief moment he would think only of this, and not of the disturbances both in front of and behind him. At last he dropped it to the ground, and hacked up a thick glob of spittle to lay directly where it lay. Not the most gentlemanly or even rational of decisions to be made, but he was in his least rational state of mind. When he walked off wordlessly, his girlfriend hurriedly followed him. Just as she always did. Ciel shouldn't have wasted so much time bargaining over her agreement.

He should've known she'd always be an extension of himself. He should've known that she'd always do anything for him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /A/N/: I thought about getting lewder but…at this point it's just not realistic. Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate!


	9. Hands

"I'm just saying that I don't trust him."

Alois sighed. He tapped his pencil against the bare region of his leg. Softly. "You don't trust anyone, C. You really got to live a little."

The Phantomhive boy recognized that he wasn't being fair. Just the other day he was practically kicking the blond out the door himself, while he was now adamant in retracting his former statements. It was cruel almost, to dangle dreams in front of his friend and then scold him for taking up the opportunity. Besides, what was there to lose? Alois had slept with tons of sketchy boys. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything. Ciel glanced out the window, which had two curtains parted neatly across the center. Between the two lengths of fabric he could see a single tree peeking back at him, slanted. There were birds in the tree.

As if on cue, Alois scampered over to the window. His lower half wiggled excitedly, dog-like. He must've seen something. Something that wasn't tree. "Speaking of living a little…"

Ciel sighed. He knew without questioning that there must be some sort of male student wandering about, some poor unfortunate soul who had stumbled onto the wrong sidewalk amidst his campus stay. He pursed his lips inquisitively before speaking. He tried to choose his words carefully, to keep his voice even and nonthreatening. "Whatever you do, don't- "

Too late. Alois was shimmying the window upwards, a miracle given his lack of arm muscle. He called out in that agitating singsong voice of his. "Hey boys! We're open!"

Boys? Surely he can't be implying-

But Ciel knew this was exactly what he was implying. Of all the spontaneous inconsiderable things to force on a roommate, this had to take the cake. Ciel wasn't in the mood to entertain much of anyone, especially not the kind of people who Alois would find attractive. "It's a school night, you know. And I don't particularly care for whatever hooligans you think you need in your life."

Alois pouted, but did not back down as Ciel would have wished.

"This is something I want okay? Humor me. It's been a rough past few days." Ciel tried not to choke on the irony, as a bitter lemon of circumstance lodged itself in his throat. Ciel had been privy to a bathroom scene he had not wanted to be privy too. Ciel had been confronted by his sappy excuse of a girlfriend, and forced to entertain her for an insane amount of hours. At this point, he was not in the business of distributing pity on anyone aside from himself. Regardless, any objections were cast aside by the other, who was now opening the door.

Ciel audibly groaned upon the vision of both visitors. What were the odds of such a divine tragedy? Had he had calculator in hand, he may have sorted them out for himself. But he figured all three of them would look at Ciel rather strangely if he Conjured up a calculator so suddenly. (Not that Ciel ever cared about what anyone thought.)

"Drinks?"

"You 21?"

Alois stared up at Claude through a thick clump of pale gold. "Are you?" he retorted. He already had his flirt voice on. Ciel could detect all the various levels and complexities of Alois' flirting. He had a scale for them, a scale so elaborate that it went up to 20. Alois mostly stayed in his 15 lane. But today he was pushing 18. Ciel wanted to vomit at the very prospect.

"Obviously neither of you are 21, or you wouldn't be here. If you're going to come inside, the least you can do is close the door behind you."

Sebastian smirked at that. This made Ciel even more furious. It wasn't his declaration to smirk at. One of them closed the door. The other one already had his tongue down Alois' throat. Ciel tried to avoid looking at either, but it had gotten so dark so quickly that tree-gazing was hardly an option. Ciel hurried over to shut the curtains more completely, so that both lengths mingled onto each other. "Come here often?" Ciel whirled around so quickly that his hair caught onto one of those center buttons. He could think of nothing more humiliating and nausea inducing than this.

Instinctively he writhed, which only made the tangle more augmentative. "If you hold still, I can get it for you."

Ciel shook his head, but he felt a hand atop him all the same. Immediately he forced his head in the opposite direction of the touch, ripping away a whole clump of blue-ish black. He was red in the face, eyes narrowed into lines of lightning. "Don't you FUCKING touch me."

Sebastian seemed to visibly regret the impact of his honest attempt to help, but that didn't mean anything. Plenty of people can make their face into a lie. Ciel on the other hand, he stayed furious. He corrected his hair himself, re-parting, retouching, ignoring the newfound rawness of his scalp.

"All jests aside, I swear that I had no intention of- "

"I really don't want to hear you pretend to care about my wounded pride, alright? I'd rather join my friend over there than to ever engage you in a heart-to-heart."

Sebastian seemed almost impressed by this statement. But again, there was the thing about faces. "In that case," he said, regaining his composure, "I'll repeat my question."

"Of course I "come here often" Mr. Melodramatic, it's my bedroom," Ciel watched Alois, hands fluttering softly across someone else's back. "Well, mine and his."

But Sebastian was not nearly as impressed by his latter response. He didn't look at Alois. He was the only student Ciel knew that didn't. "I was talking about the window."

"I like to see things, like to really see them. Things that aren't people. Windows are an essential element of the process. Right up until you and the other Siamese happened to wander by."

"Am I supposed to apologize for walking now?"

Ciel squinted thoughtfully. His shoulders had relaxed, and he was now staring closer to where his company's eyes must be. "You're supposed to, but I won't believe you."

Sebastian laughed. Really laughed. It wasn't all pretentious or Shakespearian in nature. Ciel felt a bit funny in hearing it, as if he wasn't supposed to know these kinds of things. The teen laughed too much for his liking, and was too genuine in the process. It wasn't right to be that amused by someone you barely knew.

Ciel pictured if he was like Alois. How he could have used that brief intermission of open mouth to his advantage. What it must feel like to kiss on someone made out of barbed wire and bad laughter. He could do it, probably. He could do anything. He was more capable than the Headmaster, for christ's sake.

"It wasn't that funny."

Sebastian stopped laughing.

"No, I suppose not."

_Why are you agreeing me? Is that your job or something? Agree with anyone less than 5'4? Seems excessive._

"I agree to an extent, about seeing things. Only I do like to see people. They're very…amusing."

Ciel suddenly wished he was joining the other two in a bit of compulsive under-age drinking. It would have helped with the stutter in his voice, it would have replaced it with a slur, a more soft and feminine light in his conversing ability. He tried to focus intently, to conjure something sturdy in his hand. A wine glass ought to do.

"You talk as if you aren't one."

Sebastian smoothly reached for the glass, careful not to make their hands touch.

"Are any of us? Or are we still pretending that mind control twink and abracadabra narcissist are ordinary character tropes?"

Ciel was cool about the whole wine glass thing. Real cool. Even though he had to stand on his tippy toes to nonchalantly snatch it back. He put his lips on the glass, the same place where Sebastian's just had been. He didn't care. He was Being Alois, if Alois had half a brain to plop beside all that confidence. Besides, mind control twink was actually kind of funny. Unless that was the magic wine talking.

"I…seem human. All over my body I mean. I don't look like a monster, just because I am capable of monstrous things. I think unskilled humans are the same. I think as long as you don't look it, how real can it be?"

"Ah, but can anyone truly see their everywhere without another pair of eyes?"

"Are you speaking sexually or psychologically now?" Sebastian shifted the glass back into his hand. He swirled a single finger in the liquid. Slowly. Ciel shifted his footing. He wasn't drinking, just swirling that one finger ever so casually, until there was no part of the beverage that his own skin had not touched.

"Both."

Ciel looked back to Alois. The boy with his tongue where a tongue shouldn't be. The boy with his heart on his sleeve and his phone number on his forehead. So much for any useful platonic guidance. Ciel cleared his throat, once more shifting the weight of his frame onto the balls of his feet. He caught the wine glass between his lips. With a hesitant uncertainty, he slid his tongue across the coldness before him, for a simplistic swipe. His throat felt dry despite all of this drinking, and his forehead was bordering on fever temperatures. He put his tongue back into his mouth, but not before letting the digit linger languidly against labrum.

Sebastian cocked his head at him.

"What are you doing?"

The possibility that his window buddy was anywhere near daft enough not to pick up on all those implications was very slim, but this did not deter Ciel from feeling an immediate crescendo of shame and humiliation overtake his body. As if there were any way to justify those sorts of actions, other than the obvious.

"I-I"

Thankfully for Ciel he never did have to answer, because not so thankfully there supposedly locked dorm door swung wide open.

There are times where it would be convenient to see your girlfriend. (Hypothetically speaking, of course.) During a drink and a couple of lewd implications between another man was not one of them. But however guilty Ciel was feeling could in no way be countered by how shamed Alois was about to be. For he had not heard the door, and had no moved from his place on the bed, and was most definitely dripping in illicit substances.

Elizabeth stared at Ciel sheepishly, clearly not expecting that directions to their dorm room would have led to this catastrophe. Even more sheepish about the campus officer standing alongside her. Ciel knew without a doubt that she was sorry, but that no was nowhere near going to save the both of them. The both of them, because he and Sebastian also had… Ciel's eyes scanned the room as coolly as possible. What happened to their drink?

He was too busy playing Nancy (Drew) to fully grasp the conversation going on between the officer and the two bad boys, but he didn't need working ears to know that the two of them were in deep. Himself, on the other hand? Saved by a little disappearing act. It didn't make mathematical sense, and he knew for a fact that he could only make things, not erase them. So why was it then, that Sebastian had no alcohol in his hand?

Alois and Claude were escorted forcefully out of the room, and Liz sent one last apologetic glance before leaving with the other three. Even she had the sense not stick around after such a fiasco.

Now the rooms contents were solely Ciel and the beast. He was breathing kind of frantically, not as frenetic as a normal person's frenetic, but still sort of concerning. On top of this, he was obviously trying to pass of the noise as casual. But Ciel wasn't that stupid. He looked at Sebastian, who had both hands shaking ever so slightly. He was interested, but still sort of salted about the earlier dismissal of his affections.

"Want to talk about it, or just whimper softly at me?" Ciel reached for him, softly prying his hands open. He felt odd and hypocritical to do such a thing, especially since he had chewed Michealis out for subtle physical contact just earlier. But he had to know.

He let out a short gasp when his own small hand touched on something that clearly wasn't palm. Something that made his skin bleed. Ciel was about to rail on him about playing such a mean trick, but when he looked back he saw Sebastian's hands were littered in such things, things that were red-purple splashed and making him bloody.

And slowly, it dawned on him. These shards of sharp that were dripping all over the poorly-vacuumed carpet were of the wine glass variety. Sebastian had heard the door begin to open, and broken the glass into stupidly small bits to keep the two of them free from discipline. It seemed overdramatic and ridiculous, but he likely didn't have time to do much else. Still, Ciel shivered at the thought of the strength and audacity it would take to accomplish such a feat. He was almost...impressed? Not that that meant anything.

"My hero. You do realize you're going to need stitches, right? And you ruined any aesthetically pleasing impression that you could have eventually achieved with I don't know, hands that aren't deformed?"

"You're flattered."

Ciel fumed.

"If so, barely. You need to go to a hospital or something. You're ruining the rug." Ciel didn't care about the rug.

"Fair enough," Sebastian retorted, smiling wickedly despite his minor agony. He presented his hand out flat, as if trying to feed a baby bird, "but before I go, how do you feel about one last lick?"


	10. Chest

Ciel Phantomhive was having a staring match with his phone. His eyes glazed over it with an intense ferocity, daring the hunk of metal to make its "blink" before he. This silent battle continued for what felt like decades, time becoming a thicker bowl of soup every time his gaze intensified. At last, the creature let out a howl of rage, shrieking through a clutter of dings and beeps.

"She said she's sorry, you know. She couldn't have known it was party night in the Trancyhive household."

This only caused Ciel to stare more angrily, to writhe with displeasure and contort all of his features. He despised the conjoining of their names in such a way, as if their was any sort of matrimony to be associated with the two of them. "You of all people should forgive her the least, given you're about to be expelled! You'd be better off to shut your mouth and pack faster."

Alois pouted, putting his one and only book into the battered old box he had deemed "suitcase". They had given him a time limit as far as moving preparations, which was why he shouldn't be dilly-dallying nearly as much as he was. "I'm not expelled! They're just switching me out of this room for a while. And taking me out of all my classes. And prohibiting me from wandering around all areas of school campus, excluding the library and cafeteria."

His cell phone rang again. Ciel tsk'ed at it. "Alois," he said, "that's our school's way of expelling someone." The smart thing to do would have been to turn off his ringer, but in doing so Ciel would be deriving himself of the pure fury he retained from glaring at it according to each newfound sound.

"You aren't really mad for my sake, though. You're just mad that you didn't get your goodnight kiss." Alois had finished packing, his single box spilling outward back onto his bed every time he tried to move it. Stickers and jolly ranchers kept reverting back to box-vomit, exposing the blond for the childish imp that he truly was. Ciel looked on him with disdain, harnessing a visible lack of amusement for his commentary. A lack of amusement for his person. A lack of amusement in general.

"I don't know what you're on about," he said. The phone rang again.

"You two were being dirtier than I was, don't think I didn't see it. Alois turned his full attention to his friend, stepping close to where he sat on the floor, "I have eyes in my back, you know." Ciel grabbed at a handful of carpet. The tiny colored bits scratched at his palms like a swarm of insects would, but they made for a valued distraction.

"That isn't how the phrase goes!"

Alois giggled. "You're really angry now. And you know why? It's because you like him. A lot. And instead of being rational about your feelings, you're going to hate yourself for it, because that's what you do. And because you're scared. You're scared that you aren't good enough. At flirting, at loving, at kissing. You're scared you'll make yourself look like a fool in trying."

Ciel twitched uncomfortably with each accusation. Alois looked at him now, with an intensity he scarcely showed outside of bedroom intervals. His expression widened with a sort of pity, an ill-fitted pity, a pity that did not match his cutely colored socks or playfully parting lips. His face questioned Ciel before his vocal chords ever could, though both realized the answer without speaking. "You don't know how, do you?" He persisted, answering his own contemplation. "You don't know how to love."

"Christ, can you stop yammering for even half a second?!"

Ciel's phone hit the wall. This surprised even Alois, who knew how quick to anger and retaliation his best friend was, especially when it came to his own teasing. The other thing that surprised him, was the fact that Ciel had stood up and stepped forward pre-throw, that their bodies now met in the near perfect center of the room, and he could feel the other's heavy and ragged breathing against his chest.

Alois cocked his head inquisitively. He looked at the other, at his flaming eyes and pouty lips and neck made of ivory. "I can help you, if you want. I'll kiss you first, so you can know how." Ciel didn't have an answer to that for a whole half-minute, he didn't have an answer even as Alois parted his lips and leaned forward so that their breath mingled and their eyes were locked so closely. He didn't have an answer until they were almost kissing. Then without warning, he shoved. Alois backed into his own box, spilling out even more scandalous clothing and colorful items. He was hanging out of it pathetically now, as if he were to be the last inanimate object removed from the room. His arms and legs dangled out of each corner in a tragically doll-like fashion, his eyes looked squinty, as if he were about to cry. Ciel spoke now, to the boy and his box and to himself.

"I'd rather eat dirt than kiss the likes of you," he spat, before wandering over to pick up the two halves of his phone.

Alois was still smiling, despite his eyes. He was regathering his things. He was trying to subdue the shake in his hands. "Sometimes Ciel, sometimes you aren't a very good friend."

Ciel was taken aback by such blasphemy. If anything, Alois wasn't a good friend. He was clingy, and messy, and ruined your reputation. He had trouble with organization and always talked too loudly during class. Ciel considered himself the type of person who understood most things, but this interaction in particular, he just could not wrap his head around.

Alois had left the room already and there was no trace of him, save for a stray piece of candy that sat in the center of the carpet.


	11. Heart

“CiCi!”

Ciel visibly tensed at the label thrown in his direction. He began to walk faster now, as if any lengthening of the step could make a significant disparity in regard to escaping his girlfriend’s clutches. The blonde headed beast behaved as if fueled by a 24 hour sugar high. She was beside him before he could count all the ways in which she could “accidentally” be permanently muted.

“I thought I told you not to call me that. It’s childish.” 

Elizabeth’s face twisted into her signature pout. “Are you mad at me? I’ll be better, I promise! I only act this way because I have such an infinite amount of love for you, forced into such a finite portion of time.” Ciel did not cease his fast walking for even a moment, just in case.

“How finite exactly?” But Elizabeth has already selected another topic of conversation, and gone to town on it. Perhaps the likes of her would be better suited to dating Alois, as they both had such a mighty tongue. Ciel tried to visualize Elizabeth with literally anyone that was not himself, and this vision soothed him for the time being. It kept him from being forced to focus on the incessant buzzing that she deemed conversation.

Ciel’s eyes wandered involuntarily as the two of them walked, vacuuming in as much of the campus as they possibly could. It was a superbly sunny day, dotted with the occasional frivolously fat cloud. The uniformed folk all bustled about with intention, and Ciel silently matched their colors to their ages. There was a notable influx of First Colors this year, and the very sight of them made Ciel’s skin itch. These young critters were incapable of proper mannerisms, being as naïve and new as they were. Watching them stumble about looking for the simplest of buildings reminded him of Sebastian, only Sebastian’s inappropriateness was conjoined with a starkly haughty demeanor.

Thinking of all the nuisances of his life was only making the sun’s ray’s beat down more ferociously, and the bird calls screech more impetuously.  Ciel found himself stopping at a courtyard garden due to this. He sat cautiously on the brick lining that surrounded a miniature field of blood red roses, as if a brick may open itself and devour him at any moment. 

“I don’t understand. Is this where we need to be? What about class?”

“This is where _I_ need to be,” Ciel snapped unnecessarily, “as to prevent asthma attack.” The Phantomhive boy was f course, lying. For once, his asthma was the least of his problems. He just could not bear to both listen to her babble and physically exert himself simultaneously. Not today.

“Fair enough!” Elizabeth brushed her skirt off to either side of her and then she too sat, remaining her usual chipper self. This was the perfect kind of day for a person like her. A person who wore skirts and couldn’t comprehend anything beyond what she was literally told. She reached for his hand now, intertwining her small scared fingers with his own. Liz truly was the one person in his life who had not even the slightest trace of self-respect. Sieglinde was manipulatable, but she was nowhere near doormat. Alois, who would lick him clean if asked, had proven his backbone just the other day. Even Sebastian, the most unrespectable person Ciel Phantomhive had ever come to know, seemed to have some sort of significant regard for his own person. But Elizabeth. Sweet, doll-like Elizabeth. There was nothing Ciel couldn’t do to her, though there was a lot that he probably wouldn’t. Primarily out of pity.

And it was for that reason that Ciel let her lock his hand in hers, because he knew that if he asked she would pull away, and never ask for that level of physical intimacy again. Annoyance that she was, she seemed to be all he had left.

The two sat and chatted until curfew, and Ciel tried his best to withhold his serrated disposition. Despite the sun, and the birds, and her inability to rationalize beyond a third-grade level. As the crowd dispersed and the skies darkened, Lizzy yawned contentedly and rested her head delicately in his lap.

Ciel stared down at her perfect pinkness. At her hair, which was plaited away in pretty pink ribbons. At the flamingo like hue which made up her tightly pressed lips. At the coral of either puffy cheek. He saw that this being was his, and it made him forget that this being was a nuisance.

 


	12. Mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After chapter 11 went up on fanfic.net, I promptly got a review of it from one Mr. James Birdsong. The review read as follows. 
> 
> "Good four chapters"
> 
> To this day I am unsure of whether or not he was being passive aggressive.

The next day at Weston Academy was comprised mainly of staring. Ciel was not used to such celebrity treatments, as he was primarily known by a select few for the deeds of his father, or for the rarity of his Gift. So, suffice to say he was at least minimally uncomfortable with this newfound fame. Even Alois (who was still not speaking to him) cast the occasional sympathetic glance in his direction. That is of course, when he wasn't off sucking face with his Fourth Color boyfriend.

Ciel saw all of these glances, from stranger and former friend alike, in the same light. Negatively.  _How dare these grubby perverts look at me with a sourness in mind? How dare they think they have any right to glance in my direction to begin with?_ He did not want their attention, nor their sympathy, especially when he did not know what it was in regards to. Ciel went about his day with more fire in his mind than usual. During Presentations, his animal of choice came out with only half the number of limbs it was found with in nature.

And he still received a passing score.

What was with people today? Had he been transferred to an alternate reality in which privilege and fame came to petite orphan boys simply in the name of their existence? Was he a Brittany Spears for being an Oliver Twist?

Come lunch time, three moonfaced kids offered to let Ciel pass them in line, all of which he denied. Handouts were all but insulting to a person of his stature. He stood out his thirty-minute wait time with an unearned pride, perky chest puffed out as if to compensate for the sunken feeling all these strangers were sending with their eyes. When he finally got his hands on a platter, his cheeseburger was cold in the middle and his green beans con green bean juice were more green bean juice than anything else.

Entering a busy cafeteria in search of shelter is the academic equivalent to shooting all of your limbs off and signing up for a triathlon. And being recently friendless did not at all rectify Ciel's search for seating. If anything, it made his hands almost shake and his large intestine chase his small one. All the same, there was nothing that could be done to deny himself this torture. And so Ciel stood, one million eyes upon him as he rummaged the place for the least irksome insect. It felt as if time was a molasses angled ever so slightly. It felt as if Ciel had stood there for as many hours as he had fingers.

Just as Ciel began to think that he could take it no longer, a voice called out to him, snatching him away from his perceived swallowing.

Sieglinde's eyes were the same kind of green as those artificial soccer fields; loud, boisterous, and abstract. Ciel supposed that this suited her. He stared at her eyes as she talked, bearing notice to the flickering of their intensity. Unlike Sebastian's, Sieglinde has eyes that were living-full and fiery, as opposed to pits of unmoving ominousity.

"This isn't me justifying whatever happened between you and Alois the other day, but I thought you could use some kindhearted attention. I know today must be tough for you. Headmaster probably would have let you skip if you'd have only asked. But I know your hatred to ask for assistance runs as deep as your inability to admit that you're in the wrong, so…."

Sieglinde paused a moment, looking over him. She seemed to be considering him now, analyzing the way in which Ciel had been manifesting said "toughness". But the only feeling Ciel Phantomhive had been feeling was confusion. And possibly a touch of annoyance.

"I don't understand what you are talking about."

The statement only caused his friend to stare at him more quizzically then before. The ringlets of each iris traced his face and form, as if she expected to catch his body in a lie.

"You don't have to cry for me, but a little honesty goes a long way. At least I'm trying to comfort you, instead of just sending remorseful glances every time you walk by. Which is probably what I would be doing, if the person weren't you and the victim weren't her. Maybe I should still be doing that to be honest, because you're acting all abrupt, and you've been meaner than usual lately."

"If you're going to dance around the thing you might as well point at it," he retorted, more confused than before. Even the way he walked alongside her betrayed his irritability, the sheer annoyance that Ciel felt at the prospect of not knowing. One hand held his tray while the other was a tight little knot at his side.

Sieglinde wasn't looking at him anymore. "You…really don't know, do you? Someone should have told you. Her brother, I'd hoped. Doesn't he know how to contact you?"

"Whose brother?"

"Ciel, you've been hearing about the disappearances on campus, correct?"

"Every school has its dangers. If students knew to follow curfew and keep their noses clean, perhaps there wouldn't be such troubles. It's nothing I concern myself with."

Sieg sighed. As she and Ciel approached a table, Alois flashed an apologetic glance and skittered away like a wounded pup. It was pathetic, just how hurt he was over a couple of words.

"Well, it's about to be."

"I still don't follow. Try speaking chronologically for once, and see where that takes you."

Sieglinde opened her napkin and spread it dutifully across her lap. For someone as counterculture as she, she still managed to portray this almost royal sort of dignity at all times. "Why must it always be me who announces the awful truths of the world Ciel? Is it because my petite stature is meant to soften the blow of the bluntness? Is it because people think "Oh, a kid in a wheelchair is inherently depressing, why not stick her with the duty of spreading ill news among those more fortunate?"

"I don't think being in a wheelchair is inherently depressing. I think sitting around moping about circumstances you cannot change is depressing, just as depressing as judging others for their own unchangeable circumstances."

Sieg laughed. It was one of the unladylike ways about her, that laugh. It echoed and grabbed the attention of stranger and admirer alike. It was thick loud and heavy, and sunk to the floor like a dying balloon.

"Ciel, all you do is judge others."

"And I judge them even more when they keep changing the subject."

Neither of the two had touched their food, as both seemed to understand that these kinds of conversations were not easy on the stomach. Cheeseburger and sandwich alike sat as still as the two friends did, anticipating their tension.

"Elizabeth is dead."

She blurted it so quickly that it was out of place, it had been held there in her chest this entire time, yet she flung it out with such reckless spontaneity? Ciel was almost embarrassed for her awkwardness, for her inability to express sorrowful things without coming across as a robot with a skinsuit.

Ciel began to eat now, as if cafeteria food were oxygen and he had two failing lungs inside of him.

"I saw her just yesterday, very much alive. Poor girl probably lost her phone."

"Ciel…"

"Disappearance doesn't equate to death anyways. Corpses exist, you know." He said this with a mouthful of meat, and a little soggy bread had begun to dribble down his chin.

"You know as well as I do that girl couldn't fight her way out of a paper bag. Even if she simply lost her way, to assume that she has managed to survive for this many hours without a trace of detection…"

"-So you'd rather I assume my girlfriend is dead then? Is that what I ought to think? You supposed you could redirect the attention from your mangled body onto the poor orphan boy and his dreadfully dead girlfriend? Well your little scheme is missing one major element of reliability, and that's me. I'm not believing whatever wacky wiccan bullshit conclusion you come to every time things go wrong. Sorry."

To dissect this little mean monologue in search of anything sensible or of value would be fruitless, because it was nothing more than a hollow sack of mean. Sieglinde knew this as well as she knew that the insults were ingenuine, but this did nothing to rectify the sort of feeling a person gets from being talked to in that way.

"Call me when you have a better coping mechanism," she said, and wheeled off to who knows where. Ciel had not gotten so much as a tear out of her. And now he was truly alone. He finished his meal in some sort of peace.


	13. Teeth

Ciel had slept through his alarm again. His bedridden mind was a swarm of nasty things, hornets and leeches and maggots alike gathered in the caverns of his cranium and played badminton with his anxieties. They bandied the bits from one side of his head to the other, laughing when they hit his head with just the right amount of sting. Ciel had slept through his alarm again, and he was too caught up in himself to offer so much as a glare to those flashing red numbers.

In stepping out of bed, he felt something squish beneath his toes. In order to explain this next sequence of events, one must first explain the different states of humanity, and the sufferings that come with each. Ciel was beyond ordinary hopelessness. He did not have the energy for angsty indirects on social media. He had long surpassed the point of stench and malhygiene, he was wearing the same uniform from the week before and the same knots in his hair from the day he heard of Ms. Mildford’s passing. Ciel was devoid of shame or self-regard, lacking any social skills or basic human etiquettes. He was a hollow caveman, with a sadness so pathetic that it was primitive. A sadness so pathetic that he had become primitive. If you understand that, if you can fully visualize such an existence, then Ciel’s next reaction should be no shocking matter.

Assuming he had stepped in his own fecal waste, Ciel rolled his own socks off of his feet, starting at the knee and working his way down. (He didn’t bother examining to make sure, because what would he even do with such information?) Once rid of the cursed cuts of clothing, he now slid into his shoes barefoot. (Little did the youngster know that he had merely made contact with yesterday’s chocolate pie.) Ciel shuffled out of his room with the countenance of a poorly produced android. His face and body were blank, as he lacked the energy or superficial concern necessary to altercate them. If his memory served him correctly, the Phantomhive boy was on his way to 4th period, but he was certainly in no hurry. Ciel had found that the lower his grades became, the less likely his instructors would notice or care if he showed up at all. The only course he continued to excel in was Conjuring, because there was nothing left inside of him aside from the beasts.

 He made it to 4th in his own untimely fashion, and slumped his little rear in the seat furthest from the front. It was a little difficult to see underneath the mats of poorly kept hair that now sat defiantly over his eyelids, but moving them required a level of energy that Ciel had already wasted just by showing up. The students around him were all mirrors of his past self, so eager and intent on learning. Their eyes widened at the right slides. They asked all they right questions. They were genuinely happy to be there, to be writing cursive in little notebooks at 11 am. _Gross._ This lesson was one of staleness anyways. Demons?  The 21 st century had no use for such fetishized nonsense. Ciel had never seen one himself, so he could he be sure that they were real? How could he be sure that anything was real? These were all the things he would have thought on intently if he had the mind of a full-fledged human being, but instead the desolate murmurings whizzed in and out of his ears. They had only been stationed inside of him for the briefest of durations, and it was better that way. Better not to think. Better to not to feel. (Unless of course, you consider the cancer in Ciel’s brain to be a “feeling”. That much was well deserved, and wasn’t going anywhere.)

 There was a kid in this particular class that was known as Finnian. He had hair like a doll’s and eyes like a fool’s. He was protesting something rather loudly with a group of kids after the class ended, and him and his shepherds were doing so in a formation that blocked off the classroom’s only exit. Ciel tried to grumble at them, but found his voice had been snatched by the windlessness of those four walls.

“It just isn’t right!” The boy protested, stomping his little foot with the intensity of a man with much larger feet, “I don’t care what I owe you, that’s just too far. I refuse.” He pouted with the closing off this statement, but the pout fell off the minute one of the taller boys grabbed him by the collar and whispered hotly into his ear. His eyes widened, but not in the glamorous way of an intent and eager student. He seemed to stutter silently for a few seconds after that. At last, he inhaled all that he could and stumbled over too where Ciel was now standing, almost tripping himself in the process. He nudged at Ciel’s shoulder, surprised by the greasiness of the cloth he had just put his fingers on. “This is the assignment, right?” Ciel, primitive or not, was not a fan of helping others,  but even a creature such as he could not deny such puppy dog eyes, especially when they reminded him so keenly of those which he had once knew. Sighing, he tilted his head upward, as to examine whatever the kid may have been yammering about. 

A four-inch screen now sat plainly before his face. It was dimly lit (thank god), but not so dimly lit that a person couldn’t clearly gather just what it depicted. But gathering something is fairly different from comprehending it. Ciel had seen dead bodies before. He had two dead parents, for Christ’s sake. He had seen death, and he had seen it draped over love like a midnight shawl. But he had never seen a corpse without eyes before. He had never seen a body lacking both eyes and teeth, staring back at him with two cold dark sockets. Staring back at him with lips agape. He had never seen a deceased Elizabeth Mildford, and her body with nothing inside it. As Ciel tried to wrap his mind around it, to rationalize and recognize the nightmare he had just been forced into, he found the sports in his head growing louder and more ravenous until he could practically feel redness dripping down either ear. He heard everything, the screams inside him, the screams of Elizabeth, the screams of laughter from the students around him. He heard the sympathetic puppy dog eyes as that scared little boy ran off with his Devil Phone. He heard everything. 

And then he heard nothing. Because Ciel Phantomhive was on the floor.


	14. Saliva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit choppy I suppose, but I'm tired and recognize that I'm either going to revise this eventually or never at all, so I might as well put out what I have.
> 
> I've had a million different ideas for these scene since day 1 of this story, and none of them looked like this. I don't know if that's good or not, I just felt I needed to update and elaborate the sort of message that I was trying to get across. I don't want to write one of those fanfics where characters just do and say things because it's going to make fans happy, I want there to be proper motivation and justification. So I tried to make it fairly evident that...what happens below is not because of love, or even because of slight romantic feelings. I hope that comes across!
> 
> Also worth mentioning that I often use words that do not exist. Well more accurately, they do exist, just not in the form that I want them to. So I try to alter things in a way that isn't too wacky, but better suits my writing style. Idk, just wanted to clear that up.

“Do you have a history of medical fragility?”

Ciel twisted a strand of black and blue hair. His vision was still a little foggy, but he’d been informed that it should rectify itself  within the next couple of minutes.

“I’m asthmatic and underweight.” The woman looked at him as if she wanted to ask another question, but instead she continued scribbling onto her clipboard. Ciel was keenly aware of the coldness of this room, this room he had never been in before and was certain he would never be in again. He was also aware of the thin sheet of paper beneath his rump, as it crinkled disrespectfully every time he dare attempt to adjust himself.

“And you have no history of faintness?” Kind of a redundant question. 

Ciel’s feet were especially cold, given their lack of sock. The shoes that were associated with his level of uniform were thin as that piece of paper, so that Ciel might as well have been sitting there barefoot, bathing in that cold tile floor. Still he did his best to sit almost perfectly still, as fidgeting was unbecoming. (Though lately, a lot about Mr. Phantomhive was unbecoming.) 

“I mean, I’ve had severe asthma attacks plenty of times before. But nothing this significant, and nothing this recent. Does that answer your question?” Ciel said his “does that answer your question” in  a way that implied it better have answered her question, and she was an insect for asking such a question in the first place. He had no reason to be cruel to her, but this habitual way of speaking and way of being was all that Ciel knew. If anything, the professional should be impressed by his behavior, awestruck that he had managed to portray even a smidgen of original personality, given his recent philosophy on life.

The registered nurse hummed softly as she worked, to a tune Ciel did not recognize. It sounded like something out of one of those dusty old music boxes. The harmony was as grey as the person producing it. She stopped herself on occasion, to look at her patient just a little while longer. When he could take no more, Ciel cleared his throat.

“Isn’t something going to be done?”

“Every second of every minute, someone is doing something. You and I have been doing something together for around,” she paused and glanced at the clock almost directly above her, “Thirty minutes now. Does that answer your question?” Ciel could not tell if he was being condescended or not, but being in this room with her and without justice was making his spine itch. He could feel tiny tarantulas making their way across each bony indentation, pausing only to encourage one another.

“I meant, is something going to be done about that boy. And the image that he showed me.” 

Ciel had explained to this particular staff member what had happened about three times now. And heads still weren’t rolling. She began to count her popsicle sticks now, pretending this was some sort of very important task that could see no interruption.

“Well, you’re a smart boy. You tell me.”

The nurse was no longer looking at him as she spoke, and Ciel almost missed the sensation. What kind of a sickly sap had he turned into? Beguiled by the mere glance of a stranger? But something about this woman was vexingly unstrange to him, as if the two beings were cousins or allies or long separated daughter and son. He shared something with her. Ciel stood up. The clock ticked its apologetic response. “You aren’t even going to try? A lesser student in my place may have had a mental breakdown, you know.”

The nurse had switched from popsicle sticks to band aids, and she currently held several slabs of them in either hand. “What can be done Ciel? There’s no evidence that such a thing even happened. And if there was, then what?”

A thousand answers piled up in the Phantomhive’s head. They offered themselves up in the form of potential questions, each as helpless and uncertain as the next. But they were all something, and something was better than nothing. His mind sorted them out, rationalizing and categorizing. It settled on a select few for highlighting and revisitiation. Suspension? Financial compensation? An extreme heartfelt and handwritten apology? Jail time was also ideal, though extremely unlikely.

“Well, we could at least try. We could do _something_.”

There were now five piles of band aids, based upon both size and shape. Color and texture were too ubiquitous to factor in. “I am already doing something, and you are already doing something. Currently your something is distracting me from mine, and giving me a bit of a headache.” Ciel withdrew any empathetic flashes he had held before. Distracting? Headache? He was irate at the audacity. He could have suffered major head injury, and all anyone wanted to think about was themselves.

He left the nurse’s office in a huff, his little quagmire becoming more and more monstrous with every given step. His friend and worshipper was dead by mutilation. He was falling behind academically. He was without friends, without family, without vengeance. And his face really fucking hurt. Ciel touched at his own soreness as he walked, remembering the fall. Or at least, what led up to it. But the more he remembered the more his body would tremble, and the more distressed he would become. 

There was no way he could go to class like this, with the body of a glass doll and the mind of a hurricane. It was dangerous. It was idiotic. So Ciel was going to try something new instead. Something to make sense of all the red, grey, and black splotches. Ciel was going to try skipping.

…

 

Given his semi-recent bathroom incident, the Phantomhive teen quickly decided against taking shelter in a stall. Being the academically active child that he was , however, he knew that every classroom was full at this time of day. So where did that leave him? A hallway wanderer was bound to be found and executed without a moment’s hesitation. Ciel had to get out of the open, and fast. But how?

Ciel knew that his own room was too disgusting to house himself in, knew that to return at this time would be to subject himself to a greater awfulness than he could imagine. But the library meant dealing with the librarian, the cafeteria would be locked up, and outdoor campus areas were just as dangerous as those wide patches of hallway. There was only one place in which Ciel knew he would be welcomed. One place where he knew the company had no high horse to sit upon. Sebastian opened up for him at the first knock.

“You’re never going to be any good at anything if you skip class so regularly.” The taller man stood directly in the doorway, blocking out the entryway ever so casually. He stared with this evil yet jovial sort of look in his eye. The edges of his mouth were twitching ever so slightly. It took Ciel a moment to realize that this was supposed to be a smile.

“Is that why you have graced me with your presence, Phantomhive? Were you in a lecturing mood?” Not in the gaming state of mind, Ciel pushed past him and into the dorm room. Only due to their difference in both strength and stature, it was not quite a successful push, but more of a merging and grinding of the two bodies against one another. Ciel had practically had to walk _through_ his present company, which meant feeling each and every curvaceous quadrant of one another.

After that humiliating sequence was over, the two got along surprisingly well. Sebastian had been graced with one of those kitchen/dining room combos, which allowed the two of them to sit and converse far from the distasteful proximity of mattress or couch cushion. Mr. Michaelis looked up from his tea for a moment. His lips had been moistened by the drink, so that they glistened like Christmas ornaments whenever he spoke. “Can I tell you something?”

Such a sentence it was! So subtly inuendous and intimate. So honest and interesting in its formation. Ciel watched the lips as he responded. “Seeing as though I’m here, I have nothing better to do, and both of my ears function properly…I’d say yes.” He replied in a way that implied a lack of caring, which both he and Sebastian knew to be untrue. In reality Ciel was on the edge of his seat, enticed by the lips and their every earnest word.

Sebastian drummed his fingertips on the table. “How do I put this politely? You smell awful. Absolutely terrible. Never has a man stunk more than Ciel Phantomhive, on this particular day, at this particular time.”

The younger lad’s face accumulated hotness so quickly that the two of them could have boiled more tea atop it. “You bastard! I’m in mourning!”

“No dearest, mourning is when you wear a little black dress. Not when you eat dog shit for five consecutive days.” The pure impetuousness and vulgarity of such statements was just as shocking as it was rage-inducing. So, this was what he got for visiting? Cruel teasing? Total humiliation? A front row seat to a pair of lips that would never touch his own?

“If that’s what you think of me, I’ll happily make my exit.” The little wooden chair trilled obnoxiously as he took his stand, as if also protesting such unfair treatment. Sebastian seemed unphased by the declaration. He seemed unphased by everything. Always. He did not blink nor look away for even a moment, but he also made no telling facial expression.

“Don’t be silly Ciel, I have a shower that is perfectly accommodating.”

“Oh, and I’m sure you have a perfectly accommodating mattress as well? I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Then how do you explain the softness of your skin?”

“And wouldn’t you like to know just how soft that skin can be!” Ciel retorted, stomping off in the opposite direction. But he did go to the bathroom. And he did turn on the shower.

Everything in his life had foiled down to some form of disaster, and being without a release he was a full faucet just waiting to burst. Ciel Phantomhive knew this, as well as he knew the repercussions of bursting. He knew he would have to be fully emerged in his own angst if he ever hoped to allow himself that release, the release waiting just outside of the bathroom. He knew that satisfying himself meant discarding of every rational notion he had obtained over the course of his lifetime, and the only way to the discard such notions was through absolute emotional overwhelming.

And so, as Ciel showered, he began to think about Elizabeth. He began to think about the permanence and grotesqueness of death, of the way her body would now ferment into nothingness. (But nothingness would surely be more beautiful than the version of her that he had been cozened into seeing.)

He began to think of Alois and Sieglinde, his only friends in school. They both hated him now, they had discarded of him so quickly and heartlessly. He tried to mentally antagonize them some more but he kept seeing that face Alois would make before crying, and it reflected all those angry thoughts back onto himself.

He thought of his parents, past tense. He thought of his good grades, also past tense. He thought of anything and everything that was unsettling to him, from childhood traumas to minor teenage inconveniences. All of which fueled him, but none quite like the vision of Elizabeth, the hollow holes in her head. The hollow holes in his heart. The hollow -he now shut off the shower.

After drying himself, he found Sebastian once more. He was in his bedroom/office area now, presumably doing homework. It was highly ironic, the fact that Mr. Michealis, notorious school skipper, cared so much about doing his homework. Ciel cleared his throat. “How do I smell now?” Sebastian turned to see his classmate standing directly behind him. It was hard to be certain, but Ciel had a hunch he was now wishing he had turned his bedroom light on before sitting down at his workspace. Still, the faint glow of his laptop computer lit Ciel’s naked skin just enough for the very vision to be  impactful. Sebastian grabbed his hand softly, holding it up to his own face. He tugged as he inhaled, drawing Ciel in much closer so he could work his way up from fingertip to shoulder. He let his breath linger there, at the marriage of shoulder and neck. Ciel shivered. 

“And my taste?” Sebastian’s eyes did actually visibly widen this time, as he mentally tripped over the crudeness and indecency of such language.

“I beg your pardon?” 

Ciel stared at him with the most fragile and pleading expression he could possibly muster. His blue eyes were beacons of innocence, begging to be corrupted by the surrounding shadows.

“Don’t you want to know how I taste?” The tone was unusual when in juxtaposition with his usual way of speaking, though it was not ill-fitting. Ciel spoke as if he was a lover. As if rejection would shatter his little glass heart. These were both lies, of course, but Ciel was well aware of the type of seductive implications that were suggested when he spoke in such a way. He was well aware that Sebastian preyed on pleas and thrived on innocence. 

Sebastian was a good bit rougher with him now, presumably having a lot less self-control. He pulled Ciel onto his lap and began to kiss, lick, and suck at every bare region of skin. He started with the face. The forehead. The cheeks. The eyelids. The lips. But then he was moving on to less pure places. Neck, shoulder, collar bone. Arms and fingers. His tongue against Ciel’s chest was a new and foreign sensation for the both of them, and Ciel found himself with hitched breathing and shaking thighs. 

Somehow his fingers had woven their way into the thickness of Sebastian’s hair, allowing him to grip firmly when things became too pleasurable to merely bear. Ciel also had begun to rock back and forth uncontrollably. First slowly, then a good deal faster. This seemed to be a major turn on for his partner, who had begun to grunt hungrily with each grind. Ciel also could feel the rising beneath him. He had never before realized the inherent sensuality in mountains, in things that grew upward. He had never known just how beautiful heights and lengths could be until he found himself on top of one.

Sebastian stopped suddenly. He frowned, and Ciel almost made the mistake of frowning right back. “What?” he asked, forgetting his role, “what’s wrong?”

 

Sebastian guided Ciel’s two snowflake hands to the buttons on his shirt. He coaxed gently, gesturing for his apprentice to undo them one by one.

 

“Don’t you want to taste me too?”


	15. Phallus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))))))) (I am back to using my Tumblr, keep that in mind if you want to interact with me.) -Writer

Viewer discretion is advised, as the images that follow are extremely graphic and disturbing…"

"Fifth unexplained child death/disappearance that this town has seen this month..."

"…eyes gouged out…bloodless upon examination..."

Without a moment of prior accommodation, the remote control was snatched from Ciel's tender palms, and a resounding click notified the two men that their tv time was over. Before Ciel could pout, huff, or reprimand, the taller lad tugged playfully at the hairs on his head.

"You're much two young to be watching such a dreadful program. How about some Teletubbies instead?"

Ciel smacked the irksome hand away, pretending not to be at least slightly amused by the concern he was being shown. "We are only one year apart! If I was so dramatically your junior, I'd be calling the police right about now."

Sebastian was wandering in and out of the bedroom with silent and fluid fluctuations, though he always reentered in time to respond to Ciel's accusations. "Mmm, what was that? All I heard was a baby babbling." Ciel soon realized that arguing with Sebastian was going to be fruitless. He was in a good mood. And not a soul on earth could defeat Sebastian in a good mood. Ciel stared at the blank television screen for a couple more minutes. He had been extremely interested in the story, as it so obviously pertained to his former lover, but he did not feel like picking a fight by searching for wherever Mr. Michealis had stashed his remote.

A more cognizant Phantomhive may have wondered just why exactly, that Sebastian did not want him troubling himself with gruesome speculations. But this Morning Ciel was perfectly content to think of other things, to perch himself on the edge of the king-sized bed and dangle his naked legs just above that blue/grey carpet. He covered himself instinctively when Sebastian re-entered, though he quickly realized the awkwardness of such an obvious act was likely more lewd than remaining uncovered.

Mr. Tall Dark & Handsome was sipping something from a teacup, likely tea. Had Ciel noticed his fingers before? Like, really and truly noticed? They were unusually long and blemish free, and each fingernail was painted the same jet black as the hair he had growing out of his head. Sebastian noticed the staring, and drew nearer. He smiled, in a way that was almost not menacing. His breath was still fresh, as if he was immune to all morning uglies. He raised the cup in Ciel's direction. "Want some?"

Ciel understood that in order to sip, he would have to remove his hands from their current position, and this was a task he was less than comfortable completing. Despite all that had happened last night, he was still only a teenage boy, insecure at even the best of times. And on top of all this, he was a Phantomhive. It was unbecoming of someone of his reputation to be running around, parts out.

It was as if Sebastian was watching all those cogs click in his head, because his smile grew even more reassuring. He lifted the cup to Ciel's lips. "We can do it like this," he suggested, voice smooth and black like volcanic rock, "All you have to do is sip." The steam coming off the hot tea must have been filled with all sorts of persuasive gasses, because Ciel was ever so quick to part his docile lips, not so much as casting a bratty or hesitant glance to the other before he began to gulp for him. The warm liquid was so soothing to his insides that he shot a disappointed stare in Sebastian's direction when he finally pulled the drink away. Still, he did not disobey, waiting patiently to be offered another drink before accepting it.

"What is this?"

"You've never had Earl Grey before?"

Before Ciel could reply that he hadn't, the edge of the cup was pressed against his lips once more. It was beginning to seem as if the disruptions were intentional, as if Sebastian were subtly flexing his dominance through tea sips. But that sort of thinking was preposterous, was it not? He was a student, not an evil mastermind. And Ciel was perfectly capable of making decisions for himself.

Sebastian began to tilt and tilt more dramatically, and though Ciel tried his hardest to keep up and to increase his gulp efficiency, it soon became too much for him and he found a fat glob of watery heat dribbling down his chin and towards his chest. He cried out like a forlorn pup, both humiliated and astonished by the fact that Sebastian would toy with him so. The slant at which the cup had been held was so obviously intentional, and know the poor boy was hot, sticky, and dripping.

"You bastard! I'm going to have to shower again just to be rid of all this mess. I hope you're proud of yourself."

In all the fuss Ciel's hands had become free of their original placement, and were balled into tight fists on either side of him. Sebastian (crouched between his legs) was now holding them and guiding them to the back of his head. He pressed his own lips against Ciel's chin, splitting them so that he could lick him dry. The trend continued all the way down his body, and it was only with this warm wetness that Ciel recalled the spots he was covered in, the spots that were now tea stained and lapped at and dark against the morning sun. The marks and bruises from last night. They were everywhere, an inescapable reminder.

It was a combination of this realization and the sensation of what Sebastian was currently doing that caused Ciel to moan and to whimper, eyelids fluttering like fairy wings.

Looking down would be far too shameful, so Ciel found himself staring straight ahead. The curtains were parted ever so slightly, so Ciel could gaze at the bashful rays of morning, sandwiched by two thick pieces of fabric in the same way he was sandwiched by heat and moisture.

When finished, he took extra care to ensure Ciel was dressed properly. He did so by buttoning each button himself, by running his long fingers through his hair until it was lumpless. By slipping his shoes back onto his feet and lacing them up, which Ciel commented was "extremely unnecessary" and "a little inappropriate".

Breakfast, at least, was a perfectly innocuous event. Toast, crepes, strawberries, and a chocolate spread. Sebastian had likely caught on to the fact that the bitter boy craved sweetness like a moth craved a porchlight. Ciel made some sort of comment to the lithesomeness of his present company, given the fact that he had managed to get so much done on a school morning, all while tending to his guest. Sebastian replied that this statement sounded suspiciously like a compliment. Ciel got chocolate stuck on the tip of his nose. Ciel got something else stuck on the tip of his something else. (Innocuousness=retracted.)

Though he would never in a million years admit to it, Ciel felt a bit unshitty, a bit guilt-free and perhaps, just so slightly…delighted. Of course, his regular sourness would unsure the minute he stepped out into the dorm doorway, but for now, it was nice to pretend. To live for this moment, as if the two social outcasts were a well-known married couple, as if they lived in a cottage and death was a scary story they told their children at bedtime, to scare them into cooperation.

In truth, Ciel didn't think he'd ever be married. Or happy. Or loved. He would probably graduate, and go on to be some sort of famous something or other, but he would carry this air pocket inside of his gut forever. He wouldn't be satisfied. He wouldn't be cherished. And he certainly wouldn't cherish another, forever allowing his self-loathing and narcissism to solidify in the form of lashing out, and generally detesting.


End file.
